Sustaining the Unsustainable

If a words popular use were tracked graphically, then the chart measuring usage of the term ’sustainable’ would mirror any of the other explosive exponential graphics characterising human activity in the 20th and early 21st century.

In our growing anxiety, we scrambled towards ’sustainability’ for we’ve come to understand in our gut how unsustainable our activities have really become. With a tap root in environmentalism, the word’s popular usage now ironically embraces the opposite pole of mainstream economics and the stock market. As the reader would be aware, it is completely common to hear a soundbite uttered by acme incorporated that states “…our first quarter profits are sustainable”. This word choice here is not a coincidence.

It is a slippage that reveals the reptilian understanding we all have now for the seriousness of our condition. Something the cerebral cortex still plays in denial.

Why the Inertia?

Who wouldn’t describe their life as a continuous sequence of pressing responsibilities that demand attention. A seemingly endless barrage of distracting demands that shackle our attention. Is it not true that as a people, we also busy ourselves in this way?

And who hasn’t experienced a moment in their life when all daily concerns must be put aside to deal for a genuinely serious matter. When it becomes clear that direct action must be taken to address a threat so present that it eclipses everything.

Not long ago we revered the earth for we understood our fragility. This was before arrogance and a sense of superior dominance stemmed from novel technological invention. Through ignorance we meandered to denial and then on to selfish indifference.

Suffering chronically from widespread ‘nature deficiency disorder’ and becoming increasingly detached each passing day, we march towards a catastrophic end which even the most entrenched cynic can now smell as repugnantly as vapours emanating from the mountains of toxic waste we generate, hour by day by month by year.

Time To Change Our Thinking

You don’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created it. The word ’sustainable’ has lost all stock and a new paradigm is needed to slap us awake from our entropic apathy. That word, notion and call to action is ‘Regeneration’. Regeneration is beyond sustainable. If we aren’t acting with regeneration in mind then we’re falling short of what’s needed to overcome these troubles.

Real Change Starts With Food

This is why, together with a growing alliance of responsible people, we’ve put together a new program which addresses the central and straightforward question of our lives.

Food

That which sustains our everyday lives and that which also constitutes our greatest challenge and call for change. Before cultural regeneration and certainly political regeneration we must regenerate food production. Do we sustain ourselves or do we regenerate ourselves? Do we sustain our community or do we regenerate our community? Do we wait for the end, or do we act?

Attend a workshop in the upcoming The Regenerative Agriculture Workshop Series to understand the sea change that is approaching the tipping point.

The keyline system of design and the original property of P.A. Yeomans was just featured on ABC television during the “7:30 Report”.

Keyline is a land design system that offers genuine solutions to tackling many of the converging issues we’re now facing - especially water management and carbon soil sequestration.

This short program provides a good introduction to the history of keyline and its development while discussing the heritage value of “Yobarnie”; P.A. Yeomans’s original keyline farm.

For those who missed it, download the segment below.
Go here for the transcript & video

The Land Is Your Guide

By putting thought into the layout of elements and by considering the ’scale of permanence’, we’re able to produce a land management approach that improves the farm year after year. And we arrive here by allowing the land to guide our decision making process.

Adapting to Change

Anyone who has ever farmed knows the importance of water. Over the past ten years, Taranaki Farm, (situated in Central Victoria, Australia) has shouldered a dramatic climate shift which has rendered historical rainfall expectations worthless.

In response we’ve fusing an assortment of innovative farming and land management methods so this place may develop resilience in the face of converging challenges. Through this process the farm becomes a ‘laboratory’ and by extension - an education space.

Designing for Permanence

With respect to climate change, those familiar with P.A. Yeomans’s system of land design might recall his ‘Keyline Scale of Permanence‘ with a measure of irony. For those unfamiliar with Keyline Design, this scale provides a means of identifying elements in the landscape that are more or less permanent according to their place on the list.

Climate
Land Shape
Water Supply
Farm Roads
Trees
Buildings
Fences
Soil

With carefully consideration to the positioning of farm infrastructure such as dams, roads, forestry and so forth, we’re able to greatly influence the movement (and retention) of water as it interacts with our land.

Situating Elements

Realising how existing infrastructure and historical decisions might effective water is an important first step towards making the necessary changes to maximise available moisture.

Fences, for example, are relatively impermanent structures but are still often poorly situated which in turn creates numerous problems ranging from livestock pressure points to compacted dead zones through water misdirection and non-beneficial tractor patterning. By simply improving fence location and orientation, acres of productive land can be recovered while other fertility building activities become possible like rotational grazing which leads us away from the fertility depleting grazing method of set stocking.

Self-Reinforcing

Mechanical work such as hay baling becomes more efficient as tractors operate closer to the contour using considerably less fuel. Earlier de-compaction / aeration activities like keyline ploughing are also preserved because the baling tractors tires move parallel to the keyline work instead of perpendicular - that which typically occurs in conventional square or rectangular paddocks fenced to area calculations instead of land form.

Elements in Concert by Design

When the broad picture (or design) is established, activities and elements inside the system reinforce the designs overall objectives. Inversely, when a farm lacks sensible design, activities and elements inside the ’system’ interactive chaotically; usually with negative consequences to moisture, fertility and productivity. So farm with the land, never against it.